A Mask to Hide
by Sybil Olivier
Summary: Olivia gets a bullet, a stalker, and a dead girl on her conscience as she gets tangled up into the life of dangerous people. She can't trust the people she's trusting. Hopefully Elliot will be by her side when everything is over. Eventual E/O.
1. A Time to Live

Well as this is my first "in-progress" FF, I will try my best with updates. But, I need to know what you guys think, for not only my benefit as an author but for your enjoyable experience in reading as well & the M is for the graphic violence, language and possible smut in the future. Well, without further adieu... A Mask to Hide (haha sounds pretty epic already, doesn't it?)

Disclaimer: Own nothing.

Ayida was twenty years old when she died. Wisdom could be seen when you gazed into her calculating eyes. She saw everything and said little. It was the life of slumming in the street of Naples that made the lines under her eyes more pronounced, made her seem older. And she was killed by a man she never met but knew of, taking with her the tangled truth of corrupt secrets that died the second her heart stopped beating.

*

The wind was the exact depiction of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Regrettably, that was the only thing that resembled that beautiful painting on this blind early evening. The clouds were thick, gray, and covered the clarity of the purple darkness. The heat was long gone but the atmosphere was left with this thick seeping mass of black humidity that measured up along the entire East coast. The static kept the kinks in her hair and the thunder left a distinct bitter taste in her mouth that spelled catastrophe. And decidedly, it was way too hot for Olivia to be in her apartment. So, clad in NYPD shorts, a white tank top and a pair of sneakers she made her way to the roof. Away from the mustiness of her apartment.

As she walked up the stairs she heard the wails of infants and the bass of loud music behind the closed doors she passed; she felt alone in her descend upward as the only companion she had was her own lone footsteps hitting the speckled tile. At her destination, the heavy roof door slipped between her grasp and clicked back into place and at first she didn't feel herself blink when the wind made her eyes raw. She was too busy walking towards the ledge of the building. Closer to the empty noises that made New York.

It was there the noise that consumed her mind on a daily bases was exemplified. There would be no doubt that if she were a person who exaggerated every story she told she would probably say that the noise seemed to grow into castrophony so immense that it could be heard far away in space. Give or take a little variation in the word choice.

That statement wouldn't be far fetched considering the fact that everything did seem to intensify the second she closed that door. She felt the full force of the city as the gust of wind brought it around her like a chanting Indian dancing around a quelling fire. The distant curses of the New York Cab drivers, the symphony of falling dumpster lids and the birds chirping in their hidden nests; the black and white noises in the colorful city had a grip on her and she never seemed to be able to escape it.

The ledge was dirty and old and if it had a mouth to spit out its thoughts to every passerby it would probably talk about all the emotionally unbalanced people that felt if they closed their eyes and raised their arms out, letting the wind hug them, that they would be free once their feet left the roof floor. It was a morbid thought she knew, but still wondered about it as she leaned down and rested the side of her face on the weathered slab of concrete. Spreading her arms out as if trying to bring together the two opposite sides of the building.

The ledge gave her a biting response to her sudden need to relax by scrapping her fingers. It roughly hugged her back in some weird personified way as she soon began to forget about everything she kept locked up in herself. The noise was no longer closing in on her as she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. The thick, low wind smiled through her hair as the last couple of minutes soon vanished, replaced by utter silence.

She stood up and gazed at nothing as she pondered on her recent actions. It beat the shit out of her as to why she was hugging the building as if it were a tree.

_God I'm losing it, _she smiled.

It was a moment of honest contentment. And although it wasn't, and sadly, could never be considered pure contentment, this one moment was one of those minutes where everything in her life wasn't an everlasting row of falling dominoes. She breathed out air she didn't think she was holding and felt a little more relaxed as her eyesight passed the city, into the smoldering violet far away.

*

And as easily as the nice little time she had to herself came, it was gone equally fast.

A scream, she heard a woman's shriek coming from the ally on the side of her building. She didn't know what exactly made this woman scream but she knew it wasn't good as she instantly felt her blood curdle and a sense of apprehension shoot through her. An electric shock coming from some sensory nerve that probably stemmed back to some locked memory she had coursed through her body from head to toe. Her previous inclinations of peace left with the last bellow of wind.

Her feet propelled her to the side of the building and intently took in the scene below her. A women with skin the shade of hazel with a red scarf donning her neck. Her hands and feet pushing herself away from her attacker. The dirty cement probably smelled like rotting food as it smeared itself on her clothes, but under these circumstances she probably only wished she could disappear in it. The attacker, his back to Olivia, on the other hand probably had a smile on his face, like a preying lion eying a lame zebra, as he inched closer to her every time she futilely tried to back away. Luckily the light on the sidewalk gave Olivia enough light to make out a little of the perps appearance.

_Caucasian, dark hair, strong built... _

She was at a large disadvantage considering she was on the roof. She was practically helpless. This was going to turn into rape and that girl was going to go home afterward and want to rub her skin raw for feeling dirty. Olivia had to stop it, "Police! We have you surrounded. Step away from the girl!" Both zebra and lion snapped their heads up finding the source of the sudden outburst. He had a beard.

There seemed to be no hesitation as he called her bluff and pulled out a semi-automatic, firing at the brown blob that was Olivia. She immediately ducked and cursed herself for not having her gun. Well at least she knew that this guy meant business. The bullets wisped over her head as she made a run for the door. Locked. And the shooting stopped. Shit. Now she had to think fast.

_Ah, how the hell am I- _she smiled, she had an idea.

Before she knew it she had jumped down at least five feet to the rusty metal ladder with no hesitation and amazingly didn't sprain anything. Hallelujah. She descended down the slippery slope towards her bedroom window as the skeleton metal clanked against the building. Her ears were completely alert, dreading another pop. However, her mind seemed to be a filter because she didn't seem to hear the sudden gasp of little old Jenkins in 3E or the jerking of heads through the windows as she ran down the little stairs. Thank God her window was open.

Within seconds she had her gun, badge, and cell phone and was out her door, running down another set of stairs. Hopefully she wouldn't trip and get transported into Wonderland and have to fight off a fat cat in a skimpy little blue dress to finish what she started. Her mind was too warped around the girl at the hands of a man who looked nothing like a typical creep and could easily walk away into oblivion to take some extra precautions in her own safety.

With only the echo of her footsteps blazing down the steps the detective strained to hear gunfire. It wasn't like she had supersonic hearing since there was _only_ a couple hundred slabs of steel and concrete separating her from the left side of the building.

*

The sidewalk was as vacant as the eyes of an abused child. It felt as if her heart was grabbing at her throat and her fingers trembled with the huge amount of adrenaline pumping down through to her finger tips. She had a moment to pause to think of the many things that could go wrong before she began to hurriedly walk as slowly as she could; straining to hear the slightest bit of movement. She pressed her back against the solid wall of the building and slid closer to the opening of the alley. Her gun comfortably nestled in the palm of her hand; her nimble fingers at a stand still, itching to pull the little red button that was commonly known as a trigger.

She didn't feel the hairs on the back of her rise and stand at attention as a chill ran through her back. This wasn't a movie or some book, this was the real world and the only thing she felt was the adrenaline and that clear narrow path in her brain where everything around it was a clamoring mess of flying circus people. She was always uneasy at the thought of going in 'blind'. Her stomach had this unsettling scrap of metal in her hand was lowered to the ground, just as she was trained to do at the academy. When she turned the corner, gun now drawn, the ally looked anything but cozy.

The dumpster was overflowing with week old spaghetti and pooped up diapers. Splintered crates, cardboard boxes and black bags filled the space around the dumpsters. She never realized how gross the dumpsters got at the end of the week. She saw no human activity, yet she felt an eerie feeling, as if someone was watching her. A loud banging noise made her jump as a wide-eyed calico cat scampered away from the barrels of her gun. A cat, how cliche.

A muffled gasp could be heard from the trash bags besides the dumpster. Olivia saw a bare foot and immediately rushed over to the body of the young girl.

_Why did I take so long to get down here? _

It was a question that would always torment her because when she lifted the bag, which felt like it was carrying a boulder of slosh, she saw what every cop, every woman, every person would dread.

What caught her attention first, sickly enough, was the smell of the huge quantity of blood pouring out onto the floor. It was a firm hand for a stumbling block. How precious life is. She didn't have to believe in God to know the sanctity of a human life. And she knew the similarities of blood and money: there was only so much of it, and she knew that this girls body wasn't about to regenerate its cell count for smell was rusty, it was bitter, it was coppery, and it forced itself onto Olivia.

The second thing that was brought to her attention, closely followed by a dim realization, was the growing blood stain at the girls side. She was no older than twenty and already shot. The suffocating smell was choking her throat as she was frantically trying not to let the girls life pool on the floor. That far away feeling in the pit of her stomach was telling her that what she was dealing with was not a sex crime. The girls clothes were firmly intact on her body and rapist didn't usually shoot at people, let alone people who claimed to be a cop. They usually ran.

*

Ayida's skin was weaning away from its lackluster caramel color and paled as her black eyes were showing her full understanding of the severity of the situation. She was never going to walk away from this alley. Not alive at least. She sure as hell wasn't ready to fall behind the line into invisibility. And as she would of liked to have believed, there was no dark tunnel or flashing memories of her life. There was a blur of a woman pressing her red scarf into her stomach, and even then she could only see her eyes. The eyes filled with panic and concern, care and warmth.

She grabbed onto the women with the light brown eyes, it was beyond acknowledgment that her hands were warm with the blood coming out of her body, and tore the thin layer of skin on the woman's arm as the intensity of the pain that was beyond any other type of explanation started to heat of her body temperature was falling dramatically and the numbness she felt was just as awful as the the pain. There was so much she had to say... but she couldn't speak because her body was bleeding from the inside out. She closed her eyes and heard the soft murmurs begging her to hold on followed by the sound of a dialing phone, while she let her overworked body slack against the warm arms of the woman. Defeated and slightly grievous that this woman, this kind caring woman who only had the best intentions in mind, was now going to be sucked into the black hole that has been her life. She was glad that she didn't have to deal with it anymore. And that was sad.

*

Olivia's gun fell between two plastic bags as her hands were putting on pressure on the girls wounds. The girls hand, warm with her own blood, grabbed onto Olivia's arm. Her eyes piercing with an intensity so severe Olivia wouldn't have been able to of looked away, even if she wanted to. She grabbed the scarf around the girls neck and started pressing against the draining wound.

"Stay with me... come on sweetheart, you can do it."

The girls blood was covering the expanse of her body at an alarming rate. The dark red lathering itself onto her smooth dark skin. The essence of her life was coming out in multitudes as she grasped to breathe. The girl clenched her teeth and hissed out in pain, spewing her bloody spit onto Olivia's face, the white of her teeth pulling a tinge of orange and her short nails making little deep slits on Olivia's arm.

Not too far off of the surface Olivia's mind was racing, her screams for help seemed to land on deaf ears as she rattled around her flimsy pocket for her phone. "West 89th Street..."

As the girl lay dying in her arms, in the shadows was the lion, the attacker, the ripple in the surface of a smooth pond, the domino, the man who was payed to kill, and the type of thinker that would never be able to create, only destroy. Olivia was understandably distracted and didn't hear the stealth of the man approaching from behind her. He could very well do away with her. Shoot her, which was such a waste. Knock her out and take her to his car on the other side of the alley. He wasn't an idiot to see how beautiful she was. He could do away with her later.

He watched as the girls body went limp in the woman's arms, heard the woman murmur little apologizes into the girls ear, and knew the woman was probably crying. However, he also noticed the badge she had on her hip when she walked into the alley, the competence she had while handling the gun, and the word detective flow threw her lips as she called what he assumed was 911.

Yeah, maybe it would be easier to take her with him. So he lifted the but of his gun and hit it against her temple. She didn't even know what hit her and fell graciously to the floor. The dead girl was in her lap. Luckily, his usual impeccable timing was off as the sound of sirens was closer then he predicted. He weighed the option of carrying the unconscious woman or leaving her or killing her on the spot. It would be a waste to shoot her in the head and let her blood cover the pretty soft waves in her , he still needed to leave a message to whoever chose to investigate. Needed to make sure whoever wore their badges in their pockets and talked about him with their theories in what he was capable of, he need to make sure they knew he always finished what he started. So when the glory of his gun made its way to the loop of his belt and the knife that has met many throats flicked out into the open air, he wasn't too sure how he was going to mark her.

He lifted up her shirt to reveal her smooth skin and trailed a diagonal line with his fingers from her belly button to her pelvic bone and then danced around to other parts of her body. The sharp metal soon followed suit.

When he was finished he smiled and slid the knife back into his pocket without cleaning it. He stood up looking satisfied. His feet were already off the alley pavement by the time the patrol car made it to the scene.

*

A/N: Well, there you go for the first chapter. R&R please and I might give a speedy update, but then again. I can't promise you anything. I will try though :D Constructive criticism appreciated.


	2. Out of Lines

It's not much development as a whole but little pieces that make this chapter important for the future. Thanks for reading. Oh, and this chapter, quit early on is a little bit graphic. Nothing action packed... but you'll know what I mean when you get there. Just want to let you know.

Disclaimer: Owns nada.

**_Three days before_**

If the night's atmosphere mirrored Olivia's suppressed emotions, it would be silent. The streets would be filled with gray. The moon would be menacing and jagged. The trees would be naked and thrown to the cautions of the wind. The rain would pour into every crevice in the world and chill the very warmth that kept it moving. The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Her life is like Hemingway. _The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places._ She wonders if he knew that his words would be quoted. That his words would mean so much to her. That when his lips moved or his pen raised a stroke to the paper in front of him that he would realize what he was doing._What he was doing... _She isn't afraid to admit she is broken. That there are a lot of things she doesn't talk about, that there aren't a lot of people she can call her own. No one really. No one to call her own. It's clear she knows that and still keeps it that way. It breaks her every time it comes down to that conclusion, but it doesn't stop her. Doesn't drown the fire inside, even if at times like this when the world is against her and that fire is nothing but a sizzling sparkle ready to die away with the faintest breeze. She's broken and it works for her and makes her into the woman she is.

A flicker from far away catches her eye as she gets sucked back into her life... Hemingway long gone from her mind.

The sky was filled with thick clouds but the moon shone brightly through them and it was only a slight trickle that paved the city's floor. She sat cross legged on her plush couch, looking out of the window. A half empty glass of wine laced between her fingers as she was being carried into a daze. Now focused on the scene she encountered the day before. In all her year of being a sex crimes detective, she taught herself how to cope with the things she encountered on a daily basis. There were a more than a couple of times when she would find herself awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and her heart pounding. Normally she would go to the bathroom, throw some water on her face and calm herself down. Then she would let herself fall back into a restless sleep.

However, this recent case…

_ It was about eleven when Olivia got out of the black sedan, she didn't even leave the precinct yet and was just about ready to go home and savor a nice glass of red wine when they caught the case. As she and Elliot walked to the crime scene she was considering what the captain said about the case, or what he didn't say, he was unusually vague. Her thoughts strayed when Elliot rubbed his face and yawned. He wasn't the only one who was looking forward to the word bed. _

_ Melinda started walking towards them, her face was grim and her hands were in bloody gloves, but she smiled. A sad smile. _

"_So Melinda, what do we have here?"Elliot yawned again and glanced at the covered body. _

"_A young woman's naked body was found in some bushes," She pointed to a secluded area where outgrown hedges were covered with crime scene tape," she's around twenty, caucasian, and...," her tone went dark," she was decapitated." Both detectives were horrified as memories ran through their heads. Children laughing, children growing, young women walking down a dark alley... a secluded area in central park. His children, her mother, victims dead or alive. It was a tidal wave of emotion that made both pairs of eyes, brown and blue, darken to an almost unnatural degree. _

_ The M.E. saw their reaction and was glad she wasn't the only one in a sea of vest to feel some form of betrayal towards the human race. Their shock told her they weren't told much,"Yeah, it's pretty brutal. It was found a couple feet away from the body on a old tree stump, along with her clothes which I bagged up and already sent to the lab. Her face was mutilated, someone cut her up really bad. Her lips, and tongue are missing. And I'm afraid these cuts weren't post mortem." Melinda pulled back the covering revealing the head, the eyes we're open. Glazed. The girls eyes were probably blue which reminded her of Elliot's children. As the other woman kept talking Olivia just stared at those dull clouded eyes. Vacant, but still present. She finally blinked when it was covered. _

_ Even with the girl's face covered Olivia could see the jagged cuts where her lips would be. The cut was long and went all the way back to her ear. The dried blood from her wound dribbled down the sides of her gray face made her look like she was smiling. _

_ Olivia glanced at the body when Melinda lifted the covering a few moments later. The girl's left leg was broken and bent in the wrong direction and her legs were spread open. Her hands were right above her breast. Her white skin looked like worn unstained leather. Blue bruises covered her entire body. Being one of the good guys sure didn't give her 'good' experiences. Being one of the good guys entailed having to deal with all of the bad. _

_ "Sadistic bastard," She finally turned away and thanked god she hadn't eaten recently. Elliot looked at her and smiled a little bit. Her anger made him remember why he stayed in Special Victims. _

Olivia couldn't sleep. It had been two hours since Elliot dropped her off at her apartment and asked if she was okay. She blankly nodded, mumbled something close to "I'm fine", and slowly walked up to her apartment. Once there that glass of wine she promised herself was in her hand. There was no fluids present on the victim so it was transferred to homicide. She was still debating, as she put her empty glass in the sink and walked to her bedroom, if it was a better that the case was given to homicide. Whether the last fleeting moments filled with pain unimaginable to the living was better if it involved rape or not.

A couple seconds passed and she began to hear the busy street life as she laid down and closed her eyes, trying to calm her racing thoughts. Her body was seeping into the bed and the smell of her sheets began to envelop her. It didn't last for long; she was in that state of mind where her eyes were closed and she could hear everything but just didn't care and then she was falling and her body tensed, fully waking her up again.

When she looked at the clock beside the table it read 4:27am. She must have dozed for about an hour. Her body was draped across the bed, her arm flailed and palms spread open. Everything was quiet now and all she heard was the silence. It was thick and deafening. . It was cold and had no acceptance of her and when she turned around to sleep on her side she felt the sheet tangle her tank top and after a couple tugs and pulls she got aggravated, threw off her blankets, and cursed under her breath. She would of loved to of heard a car pass by her building right then

That victim was in her mind, that girl with the bloody smile was haunting her and Olivia felt like she was going a little crazy. She got up and put on her sneakers, her gun and badge, and a windbreaker. It wasn't her best move considering the fact that there was a murderer out there prowling the streets, but she needed to get some air. And again, she had her gun.

She was back at the precinct. Long walk? Maybe. It didn't bother her, staying in that apartment was driving her insane, even if it did start raining cats and dogs a couple minutes after she left her apartment. She needed the noises that were familiar to the station. So when she sat at her chair, soaked, she felt its familiarity and had a sense of calm. She put her head down over arms to close off the light and closed her eyes. She was wearing Elliot's jacket, the one every cop had with the little NYPD logo, no wonder it was bigger than she remembered. She smelled the wet smell of rain and cotton and ever so subtly a hint of his cologne; it was mellow and had an edge of spice.

_ ...Must have taken it by accident._

"Hey Liv, what are you doing here?" No the real question was why was he here. She looked up at him with red eyes, wet hair and smeared make-up. She rested her head over her forearm and smiled at his questioning stare.

"I could ask the same thing," Elliot chuckled and sat down across from her. His eyes looked a little sunken in and his shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch, but enough for her to notice.

"You look like a wet poodle."

"Oh stop it with the sweet talk already," she gave him a sarcastic smirk and lazily rolled her eyes. He cockily smiled for a bit but his expression changed as he saw her shiver a little bit.

"Want a towel?" She nodded, "Can't stop thinking about that case, huh?" he said as he went behind her to the lockers and threw it in her direction. Effectively hitting the back of her head. She scoffed and muttered something unintelligible as she wiped her face. She slumped down in her chair a little bit and he knew he hit the jackpot. The playfulness of the last few seconds was well on its way to Philadelphia as she sighed contemplatively.

"Thanks and yeah... it was just so-" she didn't even have to go there as Warner's words came back to haunt them both.

"Brutal?"

"Yeah, exactly. We've seen enough in this unit, but this? How can you hack someone up like that? I can't even imagine," she absently ran a hand through her wet hair.

"I know." He knew all to well. That was more than just a murder. It was cruel and beyond personal. It was- It was frenzied and with so much hate. A smile that didn't reach the eyes flashed through his mind, a glimpse of the profile he started building up in his mind when they still had the case. A vapor of cool air that only reached his spine numbed his entire body at the thought of such an empty shell of a human being could be roaming the streets. The images of his children laughing came back into his mind and he suddenly craved some strong alcoholic beverage to stop his thoughts from racing. "Lets go get a drink."

"Elliot it's like four in the morning." he rolled his eyes.

"Please, like that's ever stopped you." she paused and silently agreed. But she was still wet as she looked down at her attire, again he read her mind. "You have a extra clothes in your locker and I know a place."She frowned a little as she walked to the locker room wondering how long he 'knew a place'.

------

_**Present **_

As she opened the door she winced at the sudden brightness. She wouldn't be lying if she claimed she was a little disorientated as the cool air creeped up on her face and body.

All her life she hated it, after sitting in a dark room, getting sudden exposure to the brightest fluorescence ever created in the history of man. The strain on her eyes slowly eased away as the contents of her fridge could be clearly seen. She sighed with contentment as she picked up a beer from out of the fridge, her first one of the night. The kids were out, Elliot wasn't on call and it was the first time in weeks since he had a decent day off of work. She smiled as she leaned against the door frame of the kitchen and watched her husband in his boxers and ratty old t-shirt, with his feet on the little table in front of the couch, eating out of a bag of potato chips while watching a Yankee game. The lines on his face were relaxed and less pronounced. He looked comfortable as he laughed at whatever was letting him forget about his work.

The curtains were slightly drawn as the sun already tipped towards the edge of the earth, already dropped down into darkness. The vivid sky full of violet shades was making the appearing moon a pearl, its afterglow taking residence on Elliot's face. She let the carpet tickle her toes as she cradled her beer and decided she wanted to take residence next to her husband on the couch and walked passed the little play pin in the corner where Eli would usually be playing in. She cuddled next to him, smelled him as his arm wrapped around her shoulder. She drifted off into her daydreaming, thinking about her life and the fact that she knew time was a liquid. It was constantly pouring through her fingers. She sighed for the second time that night and watched the soft reflection of the t.v. flicker off of Elliot shirt.

The bag crinkled and folded with anything but agility as Elliot rolled it up, closed it and put it on the side of the couch next to the little dust mites. Meanwhile, he grabbed his beer and settled it on his knee and shuffled as he got comfortable. She zeroed in on his movements and realized his hands were bigger than when she first met him. They were dry and cracked, his palm wider, fingers longer and indeed kind of resembling burnt hot dogs with wrinkles. She laughed a herself, _hot dogs._

They had all night to themselves and she was in no sort of rush. She liked the one-tracked mind set of just being. Liked to hear his breathing, to feel his chest rising... to feel his whole body tense up as his phone rang on the coffee table. Her stomach dropped, quickly she tried to chastise herself that he wasn't on call and couldn't be like a fart in the wind when a sudden call to arms was ringing in his ears, but she was kidding herself. She saw the collar I.D. as he picked it up.

_ Cregan._

"Stabler." He untangled himself from their half embrace and sat straight up, with his shoulders squared. The bottle he had snapped down against the table making a sound like the cap of a Snapple bottle when the safety seal was broken. His eyebrows furrowed and his jaw clenched. "What do you mean she's in the hospital...What the hell happened?" his voice raised a few octaves and his face went livid,"Yeah, I'll be right there." He shut the phone down with the exasperation he carried with himself on a daily basis and took no time to look at his wife and tell her that his partner was in the hospital and that he was scared shitless because he didn't want to close his eyes and picture the images of her dead on a silver table with a sheet over her head, because he didn't want those damn dreams to be a reality. He had no time to think, so instead he blinked hard and quick and ran up the stairs to the bedroom he wouldn't be sleeping in for the next couple of days.

Elliot was putting on the closest pair of clothes he could grab at. Some jean's he wore the other day and a clean dark gray t-shirt. He sat down on the bed and pulled a pair of sneakers from under it. His mind was miles away as his wife's feet could be heard on the creaking boards of the stairs. She was leaning against the door frame again, knowing the difference of her situation than minutes before as he sat on the bed, bent over and holding a shoe. He looked lost and a little vulnerable. She approached him with caution, knowing all to well his way of expressing himself: anger. She approached him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"What happened?" He looked out the window and not particularly focused on anything specific. He wanted to walk out of the house like he'd done so many times before: with no coherent need to process or talk about anything, but this was different, and she knew it, he had to say something.

"Liv, she uh, she's in the hospital." he said it with such detachment, but she knew him long enough to know somewhere inside his mind there was something screaming and panicking and desperate to see if _Liv_ was okay. And Kathy hated herself for the way she interpreted their... relationship, friendship, partnership, whatever you wanted to call it. She envied what the other woman had, this understanding of her husband that she could never obtain. Of course they were constantly by each others side on a daily basis, carried the lives of one another in the palm of their hands. She understood that Olivia was apart of his life, but squirmed at the thought of sharing him, like a little kid, like the little children on their first day of sharing toys at recess in preschool.

She hated herself for hating the woman who saved her marriage, who kept her husband sane at work, who cared for their children... who had this unadulterated compassion that clearly had her husband smitten. Ugh, she just went in circles with herself. However, it was much more diplomatic of her to accept Olivia. She could never really love this woman, but she sure as hell appreciated her and knew that she was a good person. Not only that, but a lonely person, and the person closes to her, who should be at her side, wasn't there but here in their house, shocked and scared. "Let me drive you, you're in no shape to be driving at the moment."

He looked at her with a little bit of annoyance, "Kathy. I don't think you want to spend the rest of your night sitting in a hospital chair."

"You drank more than three beers Elliot-", she ignored the fact that he was telling her what she wanted to do, or in this case did not want to do. She could very well make her own decisions.

"You know I'm no light-weight."

"Just let me drive you, it would make me feel a little better knowing your okay." He rolled his eyes at her cautiousness, but he knew she was just looking out for him.

"Really, you don't have to come with me, I'll take a cab. I barely know whats going on, I don't know how long I'll be."

"She's not in surgery is she?"

"No, no- At least I hope not," he let out the forced lazy smile that gave sincerity a darker meaning and left his eyes void of anything that resembled happiness, " Look, Cregan doesn't even know what happened, he just got the call that one of his detectives was going to the hospital." He wasn't even going to mention to her that he was Olivia's medical would just bring up stuff he had no intentions of talking to her about at the moment.

"Then why would you know if your staying long, unless you consider on not leaving," She left _her _out of the end of that sentence, he was making things so complicated. And he just wanted to leave. So he laced up his sneakers and grabbed his jacket. She scrunched up her face in frustration at his thick headedness and realized she wasn't going to win this argument.

"Kath she was found unconscious in a pool of blood," She flinched, he noticed and reminded himself once again that although pools of blood he saw frequently, she didn't ans that's why he kept case details away from her, "I intend to be there for her," she did not appreciate the way he was referring to his partner, he noticed that to and quickly finished his sentence before she began bringing into question any ulterior motives, "it's no different then if it were you or the kids." He needed to be there, and if not for Olivia then for himself. Just like his children, she was a person he _did not_ want to loose. He needed to make sure she was okay. Kathy looked like she was about to say something but the shrill of his cell phone rang in his pocket,"Hello? Yes, it is. Yeah I am aware...wait, how is she?" his question rang in the room and he felt the full force of what he was exposing. Kathy noticed it, his slight hesitation, it didn't look like he was going to break down into a puddle of tears, even if the panic was still evident. "Thanks, I'll be right there."

"The hospital?" he nodded, his eyes on the carpet. She wasn't an idiot,"I thought they only contacted next of kin."

*

Elliot ended up mumbling a response back to his wife and calling a cab service, she didn't talk anymore.

He didn't talk much himself on the way into Manhattan, he was an iPod on repeat as the number of her room number was being ingrained into his brain. When he walked into the hospital his feet were hard against the tile. He payed no mind to the large array of people and walked towards the elevator where he anxiously waited; he counted to three before heading for the stairs.

His mind was on autopilot as he took two stairs at a time, Olivia in the morgue with no life in her eyes or warmth in her hands came into his mind and like all of the other things that tortured him, his mind clawed into the image and didn't let it go as he sped up, anger was beginning to cloud his eyesight. What the hell did she think she was doing?! She shouldn't have went into that alley alone! What the hell was she thinking for Christ sakes? He was blaming her but that little voice of reason in his head kept telling him that it was Liv, she was Liv, and Liv always did everything in her power to help people. Oh, but when he got down to the actual story, someone was indeed going to pay.

His neck was red, a thick vein on the side of it pulsing, his air supply was being restricted, but he didn't stop. He was going faster and his legs were trembling, he was going to fall. He was a lucky bastard that he only tripped, the traction on the bottom of his shoe couldn't brace the shiny linoleum on the corner of a stair. His hand gripping the rail and his labored breathing blew the cloud away from his eyes.

He could of fell, fell down three flights of stairs and broke his neck. How would he be of any help to Olivia if that happened? He mulled over it still holding the rail, his knuckles white from his death grip as another question came to his mind. How careless would he be if she wasn't there at all? He needed to calm the fuck down. So he sat down, on the stairs between the second and third floor, glanced down and saw the ground he covered. Yeah that would of been a nasty fall. Very nasty. And after a few moments, with his thoughts collected, he stood up and walked the rest of the stairs to the third floor.

A/N: So, I hope you liked it. Reviews very much appreciated! I would love to hear what some one might have to say, please excuse any grammatical errors, no beta & yeah. That's pretty much it, please do let me know if this story is appealing so I know i can keep going or not. Coming up next: The hospital. With so many friends, a foe may turn up also to check on Olivia.


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